uneven ground maddened
the fierce little horses so that it was necessary to do some riding
in order to keep them to their work. After a while it also became very
exhausting, the thirst and fatigue being great, as, with parched lips
and blackened from head to foot, we toiled at our task.

In those years the Stockman's Association of Montana was a powerful
body. I was the delegate to it from the Little Missouri. The meetings
that I attended were held in Miles City, at that time a typical cow
town. Stockmen of all kinds attended, including the biggest men in the
stock business, men like old Conrad Kohrs, who was and is the finest
type of pioneer in all the Rocky Mountain country; and Granville
Stewart, who was afterwards appointed Minister by Cleveland, I think
to the Argentine; and "Hashknife" Simpson, a Texan who had brought his
cattle, the Hashknife brand, up the trail into our country. He and
I grew to be great friends. I can see him now the first time we met,
grinning at me as, none too comfortable, I sat a half-broken horse at
the edge of a cattle herd we were working. His son Sloan Simpson went to
Harvard, was one of the first-class men in my regiment, and afterwards
held my commission as Postmaster at Dallas.

At the stockmen's meeting in Miles City, in addition to the big
stockmen, there were always hundreds of cowboys galloping up and down
the wide dusty streets at every hour of the day and night. It was a
picturesque sight during the three days the meetings lasted. There was
always at least one big dance at the hotel. There were few dress suits,
but there was perfect decorum at the dance, and in the square dances
most of the men knew the figures far better than I did. With such a
crowd in town, sleeping accommodations of any sort were at a premium,
and in the hotel there were two men in every bed. On one occasion I had
a roommate whom I never saw, because he always went to bed much later
than I did and I always got up much earlier than he did. On the last
day, however, he rose at the same time and I saw that he was a man I
knew named Carter, and nicknamed "Modesty" Carter. He was a stalwart,
good-looking fellow, and I was sorry when later I heard that he had been
killed in a shooting row.

When I went West, the last great Indian wars had just come to an end,
but there were still sporadic outbreaks here and there, and occasionally
bands of marauding young braves were a menace to outlying and lonely
settlements